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The Future is Here: Augmented Reality Storybooks

Disney has always been on the forefront of technological innovation whenever and wherever their animation is concerned. Augmented reality has been a part of their operations for quite some time, usually in the form of displays put on at Epcot Center or their Haunted Mansion. But now, they are bringing their efforts in AR to the kind of standard storybook that you would read to your children before bedtime.

Thanks to innovations provided by Nintendo DS, the PSP, tablets and smartphones, books have become alive and interactive in ways that were simply not possible ten or twenty years ago. However, one cannot deny that ebooks simply do not have the same kind of old world charm and magic that paperbacks do. Call it nostalgic appeal or tradition, but reading to a child from a bounded tome just seems somehow more meaningful to most people.

And that’s where Disney’s HideOut project comes into play, a mobile projector is used to create an augmented reality storybook. How it works is simple enough, and in a way, involves merging the best of electronic and paper media. Within the book, certain parts will be printed using special infrared-absorbing ink, so that sentences and images can be tracked.

The mobile projector, in turn, uses a built-in camera to sense the ink, then projects digital images onto the page’s surface that are animated to interact with the markers. In this way, it knows to show certain images when parts of the book call for them to be displayed, and can turn normal pictures into 3D animated segments.

And storybooks aren’t the only application being investigated by Disney. In addition, they have been experimenting with game concepts, where a user would moves a mobile projector around a board, causing a character to avoid enemies. In another scenario, a characters projected onto a surface interacts with tangible objects placed around them. This would not be entertaining to a child, but could be educational as well.

The applications also extend to the world of work, as the demo below shows. in this case, HideOut projects a file system onto the top of a desk, allowing the user to choose folders by aiming the projector, not unlike how a person selects channels or options using a Wii remote by aiming it at a sensor bar. And the technology could even be used on smartphones and mobile devices, allowing people the ability to interact with their phone, Facetime, or Skype on larger surfaces.

And of course, Disney is not the only company developing this kind of AR interactive technology, nor are they the first. Products like ColAR, an app that brings your coloring book images to life, and Eye of Judgment, an early PS3 game that accessed CCG cards and animated the characters on-screen, are already on the market. And while there does not appear to be a release date for Disney’s HideOut device just yet, its likely to be making the rounds within a few years tops.

For anyone familiar with the world of Augmented Reality and computing, this is likely to call to mind what Pranav Mistry demonstrated with his Sixth Sense technology, something which is being adopted by numerous developers for mobile computing. Since he first unveiled his concept back in 2009, the technology has been improving and the potential for commercial applications has been keeping pace.

In just a few years time, every storybook is likely to come equipped with its own projector. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it quickly becomes the norm to see people out on the streets interacting with images and worlds that only they can see. And those of us who are old enough will think back to a time when only crazy people did this!

In the meantime, check out this demo of the Disney’s HideOut device in action: